Transparency News 6/29/15

Monday, June 29, 2015


State and Local Stories


The Office of Attorney General Mark Herring is making available for inspection documents in its possession related to Sweet Briar College and not subject to an exemption under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. Documents will be uploaded and this page will be updated on a rolling basis as documents are prepared. The OAG is currently preparing documents from January 1, 2015 to April 30, 2015 from senior staff, those involved in the ongoing mediation organized by Attorney General Herring between Sweet Briar College and its stakeholders, and those who may have a role in examining requests to modify conditions on certain restricted gifts pursuant to Virginia Code 64.2, the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, though no requests have been approved.
Office of the Attorney General

As members of the House of Delegates climb the ladder of power, they often pause to send a few thousand dollars to Speaker Bill Howell's political action committee shortly before ascending to the next rung. Since the speaker founded his Dominion Leadership Trust in 2002, delegates who gave to the PAC in the final months before a General Assembly session won promotions in the next session to new committees or committee chair posts a total of 71 times, a Daily Press review of campaign funds and legislative records found. Another 15 were big donors in the preceding 12 months. Twelve won promotions without making a donation in those final weeks, but five of them had been big donors earlier. Six delegates made donations without ever winning a promotion. It's all coincidental, though, legislators say. Political scientists wonder.
Daily Press

Brian Davison, a Lansdowne parent, once again took the Loudoun County School Board, its members and other Loudoun County Schools administrators to court June 25 for violating Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act open meeting laws. Davison claimed members of the School Board were meeting in pairs, which would constitute a quorum of their three-person committees, without advanced notice. He said the board has been meeting against protocol for three-and-a-half years through emails, phone calls and in person. “They repeatedly violated open meeting laws,” Davison said. “The burden of proof is on the respondent.” Davison filed a writ of mandamus to appeal the court’s previous decision that Loudoun schools were not in violation of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. With this ruling, Davison plans to re-file against the School Board and eventually take the case to the Supreme Court of Virginia. “I didn’t have the correct party,” Davison told the Times-Mirror, “but at least Judge Irby didn’t make up facts like she did last time.”
Loudoun Times-Mirror

Sean McCarthy's family wanted to learn what they could after he died last year in an apparent suicide. His father, Kevin McCarthy, asked city police for their investigative report, figuring it qualified as public information under the state's Freedom of Information Act. Police said he was wrong. After spending months trying to get the documents, McCarthy, who lives in Arizona, filed a lawsuit this month in Circuit Court. It goes before a judge for the first time Monday. The case pits a family against city officials determined to err on the side of caution. The officials say they're worried that graphic images and information from suicide cases could end up in the media or publicized in a harmful way. "We're just trying to do the right thing," said Chris Boynton, a deputy city attorney. But the McCarthys' attorney says the family doesn't want that kind of protection. They want the documents.
Virginian-Pilot

When designing programs for this year’s Apps4VA James Madison University competition, the winning teams had money on the brain. The top two apps, created by computer science students with state educational data, offered users easier ways to track the state’s K-12 financial information and how it correlates to other student metrics. About 100 students, led by JMU professors Chris Mayfield and Michael Norton, designed projects this semester and competed in April. The Center for Innovative Technology and the Virginia Department of Education, which partner for the Apps4VA competitions, announced the winners Wednesday. First place went to Team VEBA for its app, the Virginia Educational Budget Analyzer. The app layers individual school divisions’ financial, graduation and testing data on graphs to demonstrate how spending correlates to student performance.
Daily News Record


National Stories

The State Department said on Thursday that 15 emails sent or received by Hillary Rodham Clinton were missing from records that she has turned over, raising new questions about whether she deleted work-related emails from the private account she used exclusively while in office. The disclosure appeared to open the door for Republicans on Capitol Hill to get more deeply involved in the issue. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who is running for president, said he planned to send a series of questions to the State Department about the missing emails and about why it allowed her to use the personal account.
New York Times

Teachers who score the third through eighth grade standardized state exams have been required in recent years to sign confidentiality agreements barring them from discussing test questions, answers or other materials. As part of a sprawling bill approved at the end of the legislative session last week, legislators took a step toward loosening the restriction.
Governing

A CIA-backed startup has discovered login credentials and passwords for 47 US government agencies littered across the Internet -- leaving federal agencies potentially at risk of cyberattack. Recorded Future, a Boston-based data mining firm backed by the CIA's venture capital arm, said in a research report that credentials belonging to 47 US government agencies have been found across 89 unique domains. The public release of the report may push government agencies to take department security more seriously. The US may heavily invest in spying programs through the National Security Agency, but it seems like the basics of security have yet to be grasped -- and as a case, departments unrelated to the NSA may find themselves the target of surveillance by other parties.
CNET News

Like so many digital solutions, there’s a limit to what social networking technology can do. Citizens Connect, while hugely popular for reporting problems in Boston, has proven less stellar at engaging citizens with government. Few people use the app’s social media features and 38 percent never use the app to look at other reports about the city. In a detailed look at how Nextdoor is adopted and used by neighborhoods, the Georgia Institute of Technology recently found that most users already had a strong connection to their neighborhood; in other words, they weren’t “bowling alone.” In addition, those that did choose to participate struggled with deciding what level of personal information they were willing to share within their Nextdoor neighborhood, especially as the number of participants grew. Of course, there is still a lot to learn about these apps and about social networks in general. But what may seem like a great way to communicate and engage may not be as effective as cities would like. That’s an important lesson for local officials who may be tempted to look toward technology as a solution to citizen engagement. Apps and platforms are useful tools that can expand opportunities for face-to-face dialogues, but they won’t replace them.
Governing

Uploading booking photographs to police department websites has become a common practice from New England to California, where Facebook pages and department websites have become a popular spot for posting digital lineups. Police officers often say their aim is transparency, not public shaming, but recent cases highlight a challenge for the digital age: When does public notice become public punishment in a world where digital images can live forever?
New York Times

Editorials/Columns

Hopes were high last year when the General Assembly ordered a thorough review of Virginia's Freedom of Information Act. We anticipated the statute would get a proper scrubbing at the hands of the Freedom of Information Advisory Council. And we trusted that the law's many outdated, extraneous and harmful exemptions would be removed to provide the strong defense for open government that Virginians deserve. How wrong we were. It becomes clearer with each council meeting that members have no intention of taking hold of a blade and cutting out the rot accumulated in this law. When asked to choose between protecting public officials and ensuring greater transparency, they repeatedly side with the former. This attitude will not result in the substantive, sweeping reform the commonwealth's FOIA so desperately needs. And it is up to citizens to force a transformation by channeling their energy into advocacy that lawmakers cannot ignore — and to do it now.
Daily Press

Pittsylvania County thumbed its nose at Virginia law — that’s the problem. Every person who “serves” the county on a board or commission should be made to understand the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The failure of this important group to follow the law goes right back on the Board of Supervisors. It dropped the ball, and two county taxpayers were kicked out of the building and into a thunderstorm. Now that the case is over, we want to know this: Where is the apology owed to Dix and Lovelace from members of the ag board? It’s time for Chairman Calhoun and the other members of the ag board to finally do what’s right and publicly apologize to Deborah Dix and Phillip Lovelace.
Register & Bee

Portsmouth Mayor Kenny Wright announced last week that he and other members of the City Council would interview candidates for city manager through next week. Those names, however, aren’t being made public. And the meetings — the location and time of which remain secret — will occur without public input or review. The move, as The Pilot’s Johanna Somers recently reported, appears to satisfy Virginia’s porous public meetings laws. That’s hardly justification for choosing such an ill-advised strategy for hiring a person to run the city’s government. Alas, it’s also, unsurprising that the council would go in that direction, given its rash of poor decisions in recent months.
Virginian-Pilot

Why does getting those court records matter? For starters, they are all public records and people have a right to know what’s going on in the courts. There are practical and public safety needs. For example, an employer could quickly determine whether an applicant has had any run-ins with the law, either criminally or civilly. Homeowners may want to see if the contractor they hope to hire for work on their house has a history of lawsuits or judgments in the state. Also, the database can be used as a way of evaluating how judges are performing. Virginia residents should be aware of the sentencing practices of judges in their locality compared to others in the state. Are the judges prone to reduce criminal charges in plea agreements or are they more likely to hand out sentences close to the maximum? Are white defendants treated the same as black or Hispanic defendants? The answers to those questions are available in the central database. Taxpayers deserve to have access to public information gathered by the 120 circuit courts across the state. Merging them into one online public database is a logical step to allow greater transparency in how the judicial system is working in our communities. The decision on access should not be left solely to administrators of the state judicial system.
Free Lance-Star

Arrogant. It’s a strong word, but it’s an appropriate description of the actions of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors last week. Arrogant. While county employees – and most county residents, for that matter – have survived on minimal, if any, pay increases for several years, the board considered awarding themselves salary increases of more than 20 percent. Arrogant. Instead of having the guts to discuss and vote on said pay increases in public, board members (with two exceptions) took it upon themselves to talk about the issue behind closed doors, an apparent violation of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. Arrogant. When confronted with said violation, Board Chairman Corey Stewart, R-At Large, passed the buck. He said the board acted on the advice of the acting county attorney, “so there was nothing illegal or unethical happening in closed session.” We beg to differ. The state agency charged with educating the public and local governments about Virginia’s Freedom of Information law certainly differs. Two supervisors differed. And the residents of Prince William County should differ, too.
Prince William Today  

 

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